President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and President of Poland Andrzej Dudahromadske
The issue of the Volyn tragedy has always been an irritant for Ukrainian-Polish relations, and even more so now, on the eve of the elections in Poland. There were even threats to block accession to the EU, but these statements had to be denied later.
Who is really to blame for the Volyn tragedy, and is it even worth looking for the culprits in this story? Is it possible to find reconciliation with Poland in this regard and can the events of the 1940s really stand in the way of Ukraine joining the European Union? hromadske answers these questions.
On the eve of the tragedy
To understand the conditions under which mutual purges took place, it is worth looking at the beginning of the 1920s. Then the Ukrainian People’s Republic, being in an alliance with Poland, lost the war with the Bolsheviks. According to the Treaty of Riga, part of Ukraine, namely the western Ukrainian lands, became a part of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Polish authorities guaranteed Ukrainians the observance of their rights and freedoms, promised not to oppress the cultural development and political life of Ukrainians. However, all this was often ignored: Ukrainian-language schools were closed, mass Catholicization of the Orthodox population was carried out, and the colonial policy of siege, hated by many Ukrainians.
Such living conditions caused dissatisfaction among Ukrainians, which was expressed in protest actions and even uprisings. Because of this, in the end, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was born, which sought to take revenge on the Polish authorities for the wrongs done and to restore the independence of Ukraine.
For example, in 1933, members of the OUN eliminated the USSR ambassador to Poland Oleksiy Mailov, and the following year they killed the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, Bronisław Peratski, who was responsible for the policy of pacification – the “pacification” of Ukrainians, and in fact – repressive actions against the Ukrainian population.
All this is just a brief description of Ukrainian-Polish relations in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, which already give an understanding of how difficult it was for these nations to get used to. But in the years of the Second World War, the hatred between the two peoples will reach a new level.
What happened in Volyn?
First of all, it should be clarified that ethnic cleansing continued not only within the current Volyn region, but also in the modern territories of Lviv region, Rivne region, and Ternopil region, i.e. Western Volyn, as well as Kholm region and Nadsian.
It is also worth noting that there is no specific date for the beginning of the mass murders in Volyn either, but the year 1943 is considered the peak of mutual purges.
Since all of Poland and Ukraine were occupied by the Germans, partisan movements arose in these lands, which set themselves different goals. Thus, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) set itself the goal of restoring the Ukrainian state, and therefore fought immediately against the Nazis and the Soviets. The Poles, for their part, had the Kraiów Army (AK), which sought to restore Poland’s independence, and the Ludow Army (AL), which fought for the same goal but wanted to establish communist rule.
Many people joined these movements, but there were also those who preferred to cooperate with the Germans: Ukrainians mainly went to serve in the local police, and Poles – in local administrations. On this basis, in particular, the first murders of Ukrainians and Poles began: the UPA attacked local administrations where there were Poles, and Polish partisans, looking for the perpetrators of such attacks among the locals, attacked Ukrainians.
Most often, Poles appeal to the events of July 11-12, 1943. Then, according to Polish experts, on the eve of the day of remembrance of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, Ukrainian troops destroyed about a hundred villages in Volyn, and in the village of Porytsk, UPA troops burned down a local church, where there were about 200 people who had come to the church service on the occasion of the holiday . Currently, July 11 is the day of commemoration of the victims of the Volyn tragedy in Poland, and in 2023 the presidents of Ukraine and Poland, Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Andrzej Duda, will even jointly honored memory of all the dead.
Ukrainian historians do not deny the events in Porytsk, but at the same time emphasize that Soviet saboteurs, who often operated in Volyn under the guise of UPA units, could probably have been involved in these events. It is worth emphasizing that it was the provocations of Soviet soldiers in Volyn that often became the cause of mass murders.
The Poles also suffered great casualties as a result of the UPA detachments storming those villages that were supposed to be the self-defense base of the Ukrainian insurgents, as a result of which the losses among civilian Polish residents were quite significant. Experts name three UPA commanders as the main ones responsible for the mass murders of the Polish population: Klym Savur (real name – Dmytro Kryachkivskyi), Vasyl Ivakhiv and Ivan Lytvynchuk.
Volyn is not the only one
Ukrainians also suffered a lot at the hands of the Poles. Thus, in 1944, Polish AK fighters staged a punitive action against Ukrainians in the village of Sholomyn in the Lviv Region. Similar murders occurred in the Kholm region, in particular in the villages of Sagryn, Turkovichi, Stryzhovets, Brest, and others.
Polish researchers deliberately rarely mention the events in the other part of the western Ukrainian lands, because in Volyn there were far fewer civilian Poles than Ukrainians, and therefore it was much easier to solve the “ethnic question” for the insurgents here. Accordingly, there were significantly more victims from the Polish side in this region than from the Ukrainian side.
The small number of Poles in Volyn was due to mass repressions by the Soviet authorities in 1939-1941, when this territory was occupied by the USSR. According to various data, Poles were up to 10% of the total population, i.e. approximately 350,000 people.
It is extremely difficult to establish the true number of dead. According to various experts, about 35,000-40,000 Poles were killed during the mutual killings both in Volyn and in other lands, although many historians say about 100, or even 180,000 dead.
At the same time, according to various estimates, 15,000 to 25,000 Ukrainians died.
How to reconcile?
It is not the first year that Poland appeals to the issue of the Volyn tragedy in its current relations with Ukraine. Thus, in 2016, Polish parliamentarians recognized the Volyn tragedy as genocide. Now official Warsaw is calling for exhumations of the victims. In 2025, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance plans to conduct such search operations in the Rivne region.
Who is to blame for this tragedy? As it always happens, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak claims that Ukraine must find the courage to admit its guilt and that the OUN-UPA units did commit ethnic cleansing. But, at the same time, he emphasizes: Poland must also admit its guilt for the mass murders of Ukrainians and for the policy towards Ukrainians in the interwar period, which led to this tragedy.
“There should be exhumations, both sides should meet each other. There should not be any confrontations here, and even more so during the war,” the scientist believes.
At the same time, Yaroslav Hrytsak is convinced that Poland will definitely not block Ukraine’s accession to the EU due to the Volyn tragedy, when the process of European integration is already at its final stage. The historian emphasizes that such calls, which came from the Minister of Defense Władysław Kosyniak-Kamysh, are exclusively a political struggle, since he belongs to the opposition “Polish People’s Party”, which is involved in grain scandals on the Polish-Ukrainian border in the winter of 2023-2024. The President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, criticized such statements and emphasized that such statements “go in the direction of Vladimir Putin’s policy.”
“Polish society is complex, it is not unified. And that is why the Ukrainian issue, in particular the Volyn tragedy, will unfortunately remain part of the political struggle. But I do not believe that the Poles, when it comes to a decisive moment, will block Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” the historian summarizes.
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